Fan Fold Chicken

 

Book starts with just a chicken head showing.

Then unfolds into a man with a chicken head.

This is what it looks like unfolded

notes, week of 13 and 15 October

Tuesday 13 October

agenda —
work and thinking in progress;
discuss Laranjo’s “Design Systems” essay;
discuss schedule (visiting philosopher on Thurs 22 October; panel reviews later in month)

Thursday 15 October

to do the work that didn’t happen on Tuesday!
 

---

looking ahead

Thursday 22 October
joining with Senior Studio Arts Seminar for presentation by / discussion with Rocco Gangle, Professor of Philosophy at Endicott College
on diagrammatics, diagrammatic logic, diagrammatic reasoning...

we have been provided with a couple of readings, which I have printed and deposited on the seminar table. the second of the two is not mandatory, but is “worth looking over.” I expect the readings, and/or any preparation in advance of Professor Gangle’s presentation, will change (and will alert you when/if they do).

1. Simon O’Sullivan, “On the Diagram (and a Practice of Diagrammatics),” in Karin Schneider and Begum Yasar, eds., Situational Diagram (2016) : 13-25
2. Louis H. Kauffman, “The Mathematics of Charles Sanders Peirce,” Cybernetics & Human Knowing 8:1-2 (2001): 79-110
   Kauffman, by the way, is a mathematician at the University of Illinois (his academic homepage); the author of a charmingly illustrated book on knot theory — On Knots, Annals Study No. 115, Princeton University Press (1987) (copy in the design seminar room); and “plays a mean clarinet” with the ChickenFat Klezmer Orchestra in Chicago.

Wednesday evening, 28 October
panel reviews
to be confirmed

nihilist dogs

 

                     

whale book

notes, week of 6 and 8 october

Thursday, 8 October...
No classes in morning, to accommodate a Faculty Meeting...
that I will not be attending, and so have reserved the morning for one-on-one meetings with any seminarian who would like this.
See google calendar/meet notification regarding details, and the scheduled thirty-minute slots.
these meetings are optional, not obligatory.

The reading for Tuesday (that (almost?) no one read for this week, will be discussed next Tuesday, 13 October.
Please have thoughts about, or prompted by, that reading —
Francisco Laranjo, “Graphic Design Systems, and The Systems of Graphic Design” in
Modes of Criticism 5 / Design Systems

Photocopies of print edition on the table in the Design Seminar room.
same text at modesofcriticism.org/graphic-design-systems/

The essay begins with a discussion of the grid, and specifically of Josef Müller-Brockmann his Grid Systems (1981)

I have left a photocopy of the title, table of contents and some other pages from that volume.

Of greatest interest is “grid and design philosophy” (page 10), whose English-language version is given below :

• The use of the grid as an ordering system is the expression of a certain mental attitude inasmuch as it shows that the designer conceives his work in terms that are constructive and oriented to the future.
• This is the expression of a professional ethos: the designer’s work should have the clearly intelligible, objective, functional, and aesthetic quality of mathematical thinking.
• His work should thus be a contribution to general culture and itself form part of it.
• Constructivist design that is capable of analysis and reproduction can influence and enhance the taste of a society and the way it conceives forms and colors. Design that is objective, committed to the common weal, well composed, and refined constitutes the basis of democratic behavior.
• Constructivist design means the conversion of design laws into practical solutions. Work done systematically and in accordance with strict formal principles makes those demands for directness, intelligibility, and the integration of all factors that are also vital in sociopolitical life.
• Working with the grid system means submitting to laws of universal validity.
• The use of the grid system implies the will to systematize, to clarify
  the will to penetrate to the essentials, to concentrate
  the will to cultivate objectivity instead of subjectivity
  the will to rationalize the creative and technical production processes
  the will to integrate elements of color, form, and material
  the will to achieve architectural dominion over surface and space
  the will to adopt a positive, forward-looking attitude
  the recognition of the importance of education and the effect of work devised in a constructive and creative spirit.
• Every visual creative work is a manifestation of the character of the designer. It is a reflection of his knowledge, his ability, and his mentality.

Müller-Brockmann (book and photocopies) can be found on table in the Seminar Room.
Also on the table (and open to a nice identity exercise) is David Reinfurt and Robert Wiesenberger their monograph Muriel Cooper (2017), on that important designer whose work was inflected by, and played with, grids and similar systems.
something about Cooper (and the book) here
more about Cooper, in the MIT archives, in Madeleine Morley’s essay “Looking Back on Muriel Cooper’s Visions of the Future”.
 

Getting Refamiliarized — Looking back as a way to move FORWARD

These last several days have been difficult. Every time I turn around, or look at my phone it just seems like more and more bad news. I want to try and forge a way through the fog of confusion in this country and the world right now. I knew that I had some work related to my Artist and the Notebook class I took a couple semesters back that seemed really relevant to what I’m trying to work towards now. The idea of collections — of being lost and found, of the significant and the Insignificant. So I decided to take a look at it. 

Two Hundred and Twenty Years of Tradition: 1801—2021